


backward

by esmeanne



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:39:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esmeanne/pseuds/esmeanne
Summary: Carlisle and Esme take a walk through her childhood home.





	backward

**Author's Note:**

> an: i know that vamps are supposed to lose some of their human memories over time but just humor me here

Esme was quiet as she watched the city pass them by from the passenger's seat. It had been a little over ten years since she'd been back to Ohio. The city had advanced, new buildings stood proudly as automobiles moved down the streets.

"How often did you come into the city?" Carlisle asked.

"Not too often as a child. Sometimes I came in with Charles if he was in a good mood. He'd drop me off at the library while he went to work."

"You spent the whole day at the library?" He asked, knowing full well that while she could easily get lost in a book for hours, she wasn't one to sit still and read the day away.

"No." She replied. "I usually walked home around lunchtime."

He turn the automobile easily, making their way out of the city. The buildings began to fade in the distance as the traffic dwindled. "You walked all the way home?"

"It wasn't too far. Charles and I lived just a few miles north and I enjoyed the fresh air."

Esme looked out the window again, watching their surroundings transform from impressive buildings to fields of green. She'd driven through state after state with Carlisle, had seen more fields than she could count, but there was something about being back here. Being back in Ohio, surrounded by the familiar sight of corn stalks taller than her, fields similar to the ones she'd played in as a child.

Pebbles bounced off of the side of the car as Carlisle turned down the dirt road that led to her family's old farm. She was surprised by how dreary it looked. She knew it'd be like that- Carlisle had told her so. The Depression had hit them hard and most families had lost their farms; the town had up and left, moving into cities in hopes of finding work. That was why they were able to visit, the reason she was able to show him her old home. If the town was still thriving as it had been when she was a child, they never would have been able to stop. Esme hadn't been dead long enough.

"That was my school." She told him, pointing to the old schoolhouse. Some of her fondest childhood memories took place in that rundown building. It was where she'd learned to read, where she'd learned to paint, had met her best friends.

Carlisle smiled. "It looks nice."

"It was. Small but nice."

The car moved along another mile or so before pulling onto a path in the grass that led to her family's home. Carlisle parked the car and looked at her. "Ready?"

"Yeah." Esme said softly, pushing the door open and climbing out. The breeze blew her hair into her face and made the skirt of her dress billow against her legs. The weather was overcast, a storm on its way. The perfect weather for them. They met around at the front of the car, reaching out to intertwine their hands as they started walking.

She was quiet as they strolled, looking around the small farm. It had seemed so much bigger when she was a child.

After a moment, she pulled him over to a small cluster of trees.

"These were the trees I used to climb." She smiled, dropping his hand to walk under the branches. She stopped before the tallest one, patting the trunk. "And this one right here, was my favorite."

"Yeah?" Carlisle smiled. "Which one did you fall out of?"

She looked around. "Oh, all of them. But the one that you're looking for is this one." Esme walked to the back of the group of trees, reaching out to touch the lowest branch of the old tree.

Carlisle joined her, looking up at the leaves. "How far did you fall?"

Esme grinned, jumping up onto the lowest branch and scaling the tree at lightning speed. She sat down on one of the highest branches, her feet dangling. "From here."

He was sitting beside her in a matter of seconds. "You got all the way up here? As a human?"

"I was a very good climber."

"Is that why you fell out of every one of these trees?" He teased.

She laughed. "I was very clumsy. I'm honestly surprised that I hadn't broken a bone before I did. Mama always told me that I'd break something one day with all of that climbing."

"She'd said as much when I spoke to her. She told me that they just couldn't keep you out of the trees."

"She was embarrassed. Having to explain that her sixteen year old daughter had fallen from a tree was mortifying."

"Were they at least sympathetic?" He asked.

Esme looked at him, at the troubled look on his face. He didn't dislike her parents, not really. She knew he wasn't too of them, though. She'd told him her entire story, about what Charles had done to her and her parents' refusal to help. Esme couldn't blame him for it; she didn't care for his father after she'd heard some of the stories of Carlisle's human experiences.

"They were good parents." She told him, feeling the need to defend her dead mother and father. They hadn't been bad parents, they really hadn't been. "I just...wasn't what they'd expected."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Well, they'd wanted a boy." Esme said, running her fingers over one of the leaves.

Carlisle frowned.

"Don't make that face. You know as well as I do that that is just how the world works. They were getting older and needed a son to carry on their name, help with the farm."

"That doesn't mean they should have been unhappy with their daughter. It wasn't your fault."

She smiled softly. "They weren't unhappy with me. They were just worried. They were older parents with another child being unlikely. Daddy worried about who would take over the farm when he was gone." Esme turned her head, looking around at the rundown farmhouse and untended fields.

"How else?"

"Hmm?"

"How else were you different from what your parents had expected?"

"Oh," She chuckled softly. "I just wasn't what they'd expected of a young lady, I suppose. I was a little too wild for their taste."

"Wild?" He smiled, picturing a little girl with strawberry blonde hair wreaking havoc throughout the small farmtown.

"I couldn't sit still for the life of me. I just wanted to be outside- running, climbing, playing. I ran my parents ragged. Daddy would have to drag me into the house at bedtime and poor mama had to wrangle me into a bath and clean pajamas."

"So, not much has changed in that sense. You'd spend all day outside if the weather would permit it." Carlisle said with a smile, lifting his hand to brush her hair back and tuck it behind her ear.

"I would." She agreed, moving to stand up on the branch. "But it doesn't take much to get me into a bath these days. Especially when you're joining me."

Esme grinned at him before leaping onto a branch across from them. He watched her, her eyes alight as she glided through the trees. He loved seeing her so free, seeing the bright smile that accompanied that sense of freedom.

Esme jumped from one tree to the next and then the next. She eventually made it back to him, leaping onto his back. She wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, her legs secured around his waist.

"Ready to go look around some more?" He asked, rubbing her knee through the material over her dress. When she nodded, he stood and made his way down the tree at human speed. Once they reached the ground, she hopped off of his back. He reached out to take her hand as she led him through the grass, closer to the house.

As they got closer, the reality of how much her childhood home had suffered became clearer. The years of sitting empty had taken its toll. The wood was faded, splintering; paint chipping.

"It used to look better than this. Daddy made sure that the paint and wood looked nice. Mama and I tended the garden." She gestured to the weed-ridden flower bed under the front window.

"It's still nice." Carlisle assured her, squeezing her hand.

She smiled appreciatively before dropping his hand to push on the front door. The door opened, the hinges squeaking. She took a deep breath before stepping inside. The living room looked exactly the same, the furniture covered in a thin layer of dust. She stepped farther into the room while Carlisle stayed to the side to give her a moment.

Esme reached out to touch the arm of the sofa, running her fingers along the soft but worn material. She'd grown up on that sofa, resting when she'd come down with a cold, jumping from cushion to cushion until her mother ordered her to get down. It's where she'd sat the last time she spoke with her parents, begging them for help. They'd looked at her sympathetically, reaching out to pat her hand or her knee as they explained that she'd just have to endure Charles' anger, that it was her duty as a wife.

"This is where I was the last time I saw them. I left without saying goodbye. I slammed the door and I left."

"You didn't do anything wrong." He told her immediately. For years, she'd blamed herself- for what Charles had done to her, for her son's death, the manner in which her relationship with her parents had ended. "They should have helped you."

Esme lifted her eyes from where they'd been fixed on an old snag in the sofa, meeting her husband's gaze.

"They should have helped you." Carlisle repeated, taking a few more steps into the room to reach her.

She nodded slightly, leaning into him when his arm wrapped around her. Her eyes slipped closed at the feel of his lips against her hair. "They should have helped me." Esme murmured. It'd been years but she just couldn't understand it; she didn't think she ever would. How could they have just turned her away? She'd been their daughter.

Esme shook her head, looking up at him with a small smile after a few minutes had passed. "Come on, I'll show you the rest of the house."

Carlisle nodded, following her from room to room throughout the small farmhouse. She showed him the family room, her parents bedroom before sitting down on her rickety old childhood bed.

"This room wasn't quite so empty the last time I was here." Carlisle sat down beside her, his eyes scanning the room.

"I took some stuff with me when I moved in with Charles." She explained. "And I'm sure my parent or whoever took over the house sold what was left. The furniture was a little less worn than the old pieces downstairs."

She leaned against him, her head against her shoulder as they took in the sight of her old bedroom.

"I had such a love hate relationship with his little room." Esme told him. "I'd loved it- the wall color I'd been allowed to pick, my toys, the little bookshelf that daddy built for me."

"But?"

"But I also hated being locked up in here every time I was grounded."

Carlisle laughed, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. "You spent a lot of time in here, then?"

"I did. I was constantly being grounded." She huffed. "My parents were so unbelievably strict at times."

"Do you remember why you were being punished?"

"Some of it is fuzzy but I'm sure it had something to do with unladylike behavior, as my mother called it." Esme recalled. "Oh, I do remember the last time I'd been punished. Mama had introduced me to this boy from our chapel that she was very fond of and when he asked me to go for a walk after the services I said 'no thank you'"

"You were being polite."

Esme waved her hand. "It was the third boy that she'd sent my way and the third time I'd said 'no thank you' to a walk around town."

Carlisle nodded, listening to her.

"I hadn't wanted to court anyone. I wasn't ready to settle down. I had dreams, so many things I wanted to do."

"I remember."

Esme smiled softly. "You were the only one that ever supported them, you know. My parents and teachers thought I was just a silly little girl but you…"

"I knew that you were a remarkable young woman that was full of life. A young woman strong enough to make it on her own as a schoolteacher out west."

Esme turned her head, pressing a kiss to his shoulder before laying her head back down. "I hadn't been ready." She went on.

Carlisle's voice was soft as he spoke. "But you got married anyway."

She nodded. "Charles was a bit of a compromise."

"How so?"

"He wasn't one of the sweet farm boys that my parents had wanted me to court. He was a little older, had a career, money...he'd promised to show me all the things I'd dreamed of as a child."

"So he was...different at first?"

Esme nodded. "He was. In fact, he was very kind. Respectful. He was so well read and didn't seem to be bothered that I was relatively well read too. Every other boy I'd spoken to wanted a housewife to make dinner and have babies. Not that Charles didn't want that but he just...seemed different."

"Did you love him?"

"I loved the idea of what we could have been. I was sure the love would come later."

The couple fell quiet, comfortable with the melancholy air that had fallen around them. They'd sat through it before, through the stories of past heartache for each of them, through the tearless cries- they were working on becoming content with the fact that they couldn't change each other's devastating human lives no matter how much they wanted to.

"It was a nice place to grow up." Esme said after a moment.

"Good." He responded, moving his hand from her arm to run his fingers through her ponytail.

She smiled, lifting her head to look at him. "Thank you for this. It was nice to see it again...even if some of the memories were unpleasant."

"Thank you for allowing me to see your home. For sharing this with me."

Esme watched him, tilting her head to the side as Carlisle continued to run his fingers through her ponytail. "I want to share everything with you. Just like you've shared everything with me."

He leaned forward, nudging his nose against hers before pressing a soft kiss to her lips. "I love you."

"I love you more." She teased, rubbing her nose against his as he’d done to her before pulling back. "Now, let's get out of here and into the woods before the storm begins and our dinner has fled."

"Of course."

"Race you." Came the sound of her voice as she zoomed over to the window and jumped out.

Carlisle chuckled and followed after his wife who was already waiting for him beside the car by the time his feet hit the grass.

"You won." He told her, reaching for the driver's seat handle.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Esme said with a grin as she slid into the automobile.

"What's that?" Carlisle asked her, resting his hands on the steering wheel.

“You have to take me to London now.”


End file.
